Brought to Tirana as part of celebrations for Albania’s 100th anniversary of independence, the play will be staged at the National Theatre on Saturday, March 3 at 19.00.
TIRANA, Feb. 29 – The Dybbuk, a Jewish version of Romeo and Juliet that has its roots in Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah, will be brought as premiere for the Albanian public this weekend by the National Theatre of Northern Greece.
Bruce Myers’ play is based on the work “The Dybbuk” by Shalom Ansky, translated by Louiza Mitsakou, directed by Sotiris Hatzakis and with the music of Savvina Giannatou. Brought to Tirana as part of celebrations for Albania’s 100th anniversary of independence, the play will be staged at the National Theatre on Saturday, March 3 at 19.00.
Greek actors Dimitris Papanikolaou Despoina Kourti star in the play whose director Sotiris Hatzakis describes as a story about the intense presence of love and God and not a story about their absence.
Note from Director Sotiris Hatzakis
A man and a woman shudder from the dominant rhythm of love. They wish to be united, as the old oath their parents made demands. But the oath is breeched. The man dies of sorrow, but his spirit, that can’t find just, shall possess the body of his beloved and deny leaving it, by that defying the laws that separate the deceased from the living.
And so the story of “The Dybbuk” begins. It is a story about the intense presence of love and God and not a story about their absence.
Our existence begins at birth and it is a pity when it loses its substance. It shall eventually understand its loss, it shall nostalgically reminisce the innocence and shall desire to destroy; as to return in the great Nothing, the non-existing, the divine blank that was liberated, while we were absent, shall once again spread in its harmonic union. This is the tragic secret that human thought started to realize through times, from Oedipus and Job to Strindberg, Kafka and Becket. The same thing becomes evident through the Greek laments, the ecstatic movements of the Shamans, the mourning Whirling Dervishes, the prayers and Terirem chants of the Orthodox, the stories of those in respect of joy of the Hassidic Kabbalah.
For as long as God is absent, our religious existence rises, as solitude makes us transparent and despair brightens us up. This is the way I personally understand Hannan’s love for Leah’le, as mourning for the great absence. But even this love itself dies as soon as it begins. Is it that this love mourns itself like the boy in Becket’s End Game that looks at his belly button?
Actors should hear these words and then forget them, for this is the only way they will be able to remember them and tell us this story, the Jewish version of Romeo and Juliet that has its roots in Jewish mysticism and Kabbalah. I hope the ecstasy from the rites and rituals will affect their souls during the performance.
